Banks discuss Basel as regulators dilute cap rules

NEW YORK: More than 500 representatives from 27 nations, including top regulators and central bankers, met dozens of times this year to hammer out 440 pages of new rules to govern the world's banks.

What's not in the documents published by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and the escape hatches that are, may have more impact on how financial institutions will operate following a global credit crisis that led to $1.8 trillion in bank losses and write-downs.

The committee's most significant achievement, members say, an agreement to increase the amount of capital banks need to hold, won't go into full effect for eight years. Other measures that regulators had hoped would prevent future crises - liquidity standards, a capital surcharge on the biggest lenders and a global resolution mechanism for failing firms - were postponed, allowing banks to escape the toughest rules that would force them to change the way they do business.

"There will be changes, but not fundamental changes to the banking model," said Sheila Bair, who as chairman of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corp sits on the Basel committee's top decision-making body. "Hopefully, there'll be some pressure for banks to get smaller and simpler."

Bair, 56, is one of five US representatives on the board. She has assailed bankers for exaggerating the impact of planned regulations in an effort to scare the public and politicians. In an interview in June, she questioned "whether regulators can place any reliance on industry analysis of the impact of proposals to strengthen capital rules."

Bank Lobbying

Banks carried out a year-long campaign to blunt international regulations, arguing that efforts to rein them in would curb lending and impede economic recovery. The lobbying effort was led by the Institute of International Finance, which represents more than 400 financial firms around the world and is chaired by Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank's chief executive officer. Ackermann and other IIF members wrote hundreds of letters to the Basel committee, met with regulators and addressed forums from Seoul to Washington.

In June, the group published a report estimating that the proposed capital rules would result in 9.7 million fewer jobs being created and erase 3.1% of global economic growth - estimates the Basel committee later challenged.

"There is no question that increased costs to banks of core capital and funding will have to be largely passed along, which inevitably will take a macro-economic toll," Ackermann, 62, said when he presented the report.

Battle Lines

Banks also reached out to their home regulators, arguing that some rules would disadvantage them more than other nations' lenders. That helped draw the battle lines inside the Basel committee, according to an account pieced together from interviews with half a dozen members who asked not to be identified because the deliberations aren't public. Germany, France and Japan led the push for softening rules proposed last December and stretching out their implementation. The US, UK and Switzerland opposed changes or delays. The committee agreed in July to narrow the definition of what counts as bank capital, focusing on common equity, which includes money received for selling shares and retained earnings. During the crisis, other forms of capital permitted under current rules, such as future benefits from servicing mortgages and tax deferrals, failed to provide a buffer against losses.